National News - Page 38

Columbia University targeted by expanding House antisemitism investigation

By Matt Egan A congressional committee probing campus antisemitism is expanding its investigation to include Columbia University and demanding the Ivy League school turn over a trove of documents to lawmakers. In a 16-page letter delivered to Columbia leaders Monday afternoon, Rep. Virginia Foxx, the Republican chairwoman of the House Education and Workforce Committee, informed the university her panel is investigating Columbia’s “failure to protect Jewish students.” “We have grave concerns regarding the inadequacy of Columbia’s response to antisemitism on its campus,” Foxx wrote in the letter, citing an “environment of pervasive antisemitism” that goes back more than two decades.

The lose-lose decision on the SAT

Opinion by Jill Filipovic Starting next year, Dartmouth College will reinstate its policy of requiring applicants to submit their SAT or ACT scores along with their admissions packages. It’s the first Ivy League school to do so, after many elite colleges and universities dropped the SAT requirement during the Covid-19 pandemic, due to a combination of student difficulties taking the test in the midst of lockdowns and longer-standing concerns that the test has reinforced racial and socioeconomic biases. Dartmouth isn’t the only school to take similar action. MIT and Georgetown have both brought back mandatory SAT or ACT scores, and other highly-selective colleges are reportedly considering the same. A few

Florida school asks parents for permission to have book by an African American author read to students

By Janelle Griffin A Florida school district is drawing fire for asking parents to consent to having their children participate in the reading of an African American author’s book to comply with state law. “I had to give permission for this or else my child would not participate???” wrote one parent, Charles Walter, who posted a photo of a Miami-Dade County Public Schools permission slip to X on Monday evening. The form describes the activity as a “read aloud” scheduled for Tuesday from 1 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. in the library. Next to “types of guest that may attend the activity or

Decades after suspected arson, a historic Black church in Pennsylvania reopens as a Black history museum

By Kaitlyn Schwanemann For the first time in nearly 30 years, Pandora Anderson Campbell stepped inside Spring Valley African Methodist Episcopal church in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, and couldn’t stop smiling. “I could feel the spirit of the ancestors. I don’t know how to explain it,” Campbell told CNN. Five generations of Campbell’s relatives were christened at the church. Campbell, who also grew up in the church, said she remembers it being a haven for the local community, where parishioners could come to worship, eat the pies her grandmother baked after Sunday sermons, sing and spend time together. “It was a pillar to the community. People came from everywhere

Descendants of Black icons gather at the White House in a historic meeting

By Donna M. Owens and Sakshi Venkatraman Vice President Kamala Harris addressed the descendants of some of the most prominent civil rights leaders from the 1950s and ’60s and other foundational historic figures, who gathered at the White House on Tuesday, some convening in the same room for the first time. The families of Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Booker T. Washington, Ida B. Wells, Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, Emmett Till, and Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, among others, were scheduled to attend. Harris praised the descendants of “extraordinary American heroes” who, she said, embody the promise of the nation and the Constitution. “They’ve

After a spate of education bans, Florida churches are taking Black history into their own hands

By Char Adams Some 100 people — Black and white, from elementary school-aged children to adults in their 80s filed into the Agape Perfecting Praise and Worship Center in Orlando in October. They were there for a lesson in Black history from LaVon Bracy, the director of democracy at Faith in Florida, an Orlando-based religious nonprofit. Bracy, who has a Ph.D. in education, spoke to the crowd about the forced journey enslaved Africans took from their homeland to America during the trans-Atlantic slave trade. “She’d visited Africa a couple of times and brought back soil,” Sharon Riley, a pastor at Agape,

Target pulls Black history item that misidentified Civil Rights leaders

By Ramishah Maruf As with many Target trips, Nevada US history teacher Tierra Espy left the store with more items than she intended to buy on Sunday. She added a magnetic activity book about iconic Civil Rights leaders to her cart, in time for Black History Month, she told CNN in a phone interview. But now, Target is pulling the item off shelves after a viral TikTok in which Espy pointed out inaccuracies such as misidentifying names and pictures of iconic Civil Rights leaders. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune first reported the news. The activity book had mixed up the names and images of Carter G. Woodson,

Black lawmakers in California share a reparations plan with few direct payments

 California’s Legislative Black Caucus released a slate of reparations bills to implement ideas from the state’s landmark task force on the issue. The proposals include potential compensation for property seized from Black owners, but do not call for widespread direct cash payments to descendants of enslaved Black people. If approved, the proposals would expand access to career technical education, fund community-driven solutions to violence and eliminate occupational licensing fees for people with criminal records. Another proposal would pay for programs that increase life expectancy, better educational outcomes or lift certain groups out of poverty. Some of the measures would require amending the

Thousands of faculty walk off the job at largest university system in US

By Samantha Delouya Thousands of faculty members at California State University, the largest university system in the US, walked off the job on Monday, the first day of spring semester classes for much for the university system’s 450,000 students. The striking staff are part of the California Faculty Association union, which represents 29,000 members, including professors, lecturers, librarians, counselors, and coaches, across 23 campuses. Cal State’s faculty joins a growing number of workers who have walked off the job as strikes grow in popularity in the US, and especially in California. The union says its members are seeking “wages that keep

Black students took a field trip to the birthplace of American slavery and walked away feeling empowered

By Curtis Bunn  Justice Alexander, a senior at Granby High School in Norfolk, Virginia, felt something come over him as the bus carrying 21 of his classmates entered the grounds of Fort Monroe on the Chesapeake Bay. Sure, Alexander knew the facts of the place: Four centuries ago, in 1619, a ship called the White Lion crossed the Atlantic Ocean from central Africa with “twenty and odd” souls. Aboard that ship were the first enslaved Africans torn from their homes arriving in what was then called Point Comfort, in the Virginia colony. But Alexander’s feelings were overwhelming, even if only briefly.

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